October 17th 2015 - paper book folding

I have spent today again trying to come up with easy crafts that are suitable for both boys and girls for my St John Cadets to do that are not the "normal" cut and stick kiddie crafts.

I have a pile of books upstairs that are going to the charity shop, so I decided to try and make a paper book folding christmas tree.  Looks easy enough so I had a go.

The insctructions I found were in German so I had to hunt for some in English asn translation didn't make sense.

Anyway, take a book and remove the cover and take out about 60pages leaving the glue on the spine, the more pages you use the thicker the finished tree will be but it will take longer to do:

From here you need to start folding pages like you would to make a paper airplane!  Make sure you have the spine to the left when you start as its easier.  Take the top right corner and fold down to the spine and crease so its a sharp fold (I use and old store card):

Then you need to take the section and fold onto itself so that you get a thin point at the top and airplane shape, again crease so its a sharp fold:

You will notice that the bottom of the folded page sticks out below the bottom of the book, this also need folding.  If you bend it down over the rest of the book you will get a fold mark, using this tuck the bottom bit upwards so that it is hidden under the 2nd fold:

Keep folding the rest of the pages in the above way (it is time consuming but worth it):

Then once you have folded all the pages you will need to staple the 1st and last pages together to make it as a cone shape and it will look like this:

It is now upto you if you decorate it or leave it plain.  I am going to add a glitter paint to the folded part of each page that makes the tree and add some sparkly stars and a pom pom to the top.

please make sure if doing with children that the books are suitable incase they decide to read any of the pages!  I had planned to use the books that I have upstairs for charity shop but as I made this 1 I realised they are NOT suitable and will still be going to charity shop, so I will be going to buy some more suitable ones (maybe from the kids/teens section).

July 28th 2015 - book hedgehog

july 28th 2015 - book hedgehog

today we went to the local community centre for their summer activities that they hold once a week during school holidays.  Todays activity was to make book hedgehogs.

My youngest son started to make his book hedgehog by folding it how he had been told, but he got bored after about 8 pages, so asked me if I would finish it for him, which I did.  I added the nose and eyes with glue when we got home instead of the double sided tape.

May 21st 2015 - Finished Story Sack

May 21st 2015 - Finished Story Sack

Yesterday I should have been at the last session of the family learning at the  school where we were meant to be finishing our story sacks and talking about them with the group.  But due to lil man being in hospital I wasn't there, but my story sack is now finished.

Pirates Love Underpants Story Sack was made by me, if you follow my blog you will have seen bits over the past 5weeks that I was making to go in it.  Here is a picture of the finished thing with everything and I will add pics and descriptions of other bits below.

First off was the sack, we were given plain canvas sacks and told we could decorate them how we liked.  A lot of the people in the group did them to the book they were putting in it, I decided to do it as a general sack so we could change the contents.  More info on my sack can be found here and here

My main story book for the sack was of the "pirates love underpants", my son already had dinosaurs and aliens and likes them and he likes pirates so this seemed a good choice.  As part of a story sack we were told that the sack has to have a "fiction/fact" book, so I bought the 100 facts on pirates shown above, this was much bigger than I thought it was going to be.

I  made a little "work book" linked to the story and laminated the pages so that they can be used again and again.  I have included white board pens and hi-lighter pens that rub off and a board rubber in a pencil case.

My son  asked if we could have a monkey like in the book, and brought me his toy one from upstairs.  This was ok but the monkey in the book had pants on, I asked my friend to make me a pair of knitted pants for him.  Her first attempt didn't work and we ended up with a monkey "mooning" us, which was quite funny.

My friend had them back (after I embarrssed her on facebook with the "mooning monkey") and re-made them so they fit him better.  I was very grateful as I can't knit. They did look good once done.  I added a gold earing to his right ear, and made him a banana to go in his hand.  (Banana instructions are here.)

I made a Pirate and a Parrot hand puppet to go in it.  The parrot was a "wash mit/flannel" bought off ebay, but was green.  The parrot in the book was red, so I glued red feathers all over its back and wings and made it a tail.  I also made it a pair of underpants like in the book.  My boys didn't know about the parrot as I didn't make a post or tell them I had bought it.

I made a Golden Pants Trophy  like the pirates are hunting for in the book.  My boys thought it was really good.

I bought the dvd "So you want to be a Pirate" and added it to the bag, it's only 18minutes long but tells you things you need to do to be a pirate etc.  I didn't realise it was so short I thought it was a proper film.

I bought a travel version of the traditional game pop up pirate and I made a set of  matching pairs underpants cards.  When they were printed you could see the pants through the paper so I made a sheet the same size as the cards using the cover of the book, cut them out and put on the back of pictures of pants and then laminated and cut out.  Now you can't see which pants are which.  I printed out a mini instruction card and placed them all in a small drawstring bag.

Last week at the family learning I was given a small wooden treasure chest which I decorated and added gems and coins to.  This was also meant to be a suprise for the bag, but I forgot to put it up before the boys came home from school so they saw it.

Lastly I added a (brand new) pair of boxer shorts (Aldi had packs of 3 reduced to £1.49 and they are next size up for my eldest son but now only has 2 pairs) and an eye patch so that my son(s) can dress as a pirate in underpants when we read and re-tell the story with the props.

Here's my lil man as a pirate in underpants with the parrot puppet.

I really enjoyed this course at the school it has been good fun and my kids like their story sack.  Hopefully I will be able to make a different one (or 2) so that we can change them round from time to time.  They want to put it in the car.

May 18th 2015 - Bird book

May 18th 2015 - Bird book

Today has spent at the computer and printer!  I have made little Bird books similar to this pin but with extra pages for the Badgers to do on Wednesday as we are talking about birds as part of their Wild badge. 

I have included a garden bird survey, a colouring page, a wordseaarch, a missing letter in bird names sheet and some draw and write about the birds you have seen.

I thought I had got all the sheets in the right order for when printed to make a book - errrr no!  So me and hubby sat and cut the pages and stuck them to other folder bits of A4 paper to get them as they should be, I then opened out each page and moved my cut n paste worksheets to the right place.  Once this was done and re-printed they were as I hoped they should be.

I also printed off some news paper articles on animals and pets for the Cadets to use on Wednesday as part of their Animal Welfare badge.  At least this part was very easy to do!

May 14th 2015 - Pirate Treasure Chest

May 14th 2015 - Pirate Treasure Chest

Yesterday at family learning at the school I was given a wooden treasure chest to use as part of my story sack.  It was plain wood and not decorated.  I did the edges in a grey felt tip and coloured the box in brown.  When I got home I went over the grey with a silver sharpie pen and added "plank lines" with a darker brown sharpie.

I covered it all in clear nail varnish.  (maybe I should do a post 1 day of my many uses of nail varnish!!!)

I painted the inside of the box with a pale gold nail varnish and then added a gold glitter nail varnish over the top.

 I then added glitter/sparkle nail varnish to some gems left over from last years pirate party, and added them, a ring and various pirate coins to the treasure chest.

May 4th 2015 - Matching pairs game

May 4th 2015 - Matching pairs game

As part of my Story Sack for family learning I have made an Underpants matching pairs game.  The idea was from the link which is linked to the Aliens love underpants book.

Rather than using that 1 I went on the net and found loads of bright, colourful,patterned underpants and put them in a grid so that I can cut them out and laminate them.  I then realised that the images could be seen through the A4 white paper so I printed out the image from the cover of the book in the same size grid and stuck them to the back of the pants - making them non-visable.

There are a total of 24 pairs of underpants that I have made for the game, and they will be going in a mini bag to keep them safe and together.

May 3rd 2015 - Iron on transfer

May 3rd 2015 - Iron on transfer

As part of my family learning and the making of a story sack we had to design the sack as well.  Most of the group used fabric pens and drew their design on or used bits of material or a printed a picture laminated and glued on but were linked to the book they have chosen.  I decided that I wanted my story sack to be universal and able to be used for any books.

I asked my friend who did me some iron on transfers the other Christmas if she still had any and if she would do me one to go my sack.  She agreed and posted it to me, thanks Col!  It didn't arrive until after I had been to the school last Wednesday, not that I know HOW I would have ironed it on at the school anyway. Lol!

Then when I went to iron it on the other day I hunted the house high and low and couldn't find the iron!  Me and hubby remembered that it went in the bin after it burnt/melted my sons shirt and we hadn't replaced it.  (I don't iron very often and when I do it's usually shirts for going out.)  So I had to wait until yesterday to go to town and buy a new iron.

The quote that is going on it is from Dr Seuss.  Here is the pic with it printed in reverse (so that it's the right way once ironed).

The next pic show it turned over and the "printed bit" is now facing the sack ready to be ironed in place.

Here I am ironing the image into place on the sack.

Here is the sack with the ironed quote in place.   

My story sack is almost complete now.  I just need to finish fixing the quotes into the felt book which I am going to stitch onto the front of the sack under the Dr Seuss quote. 

Most of the contents of the story sack are complete as well.  I have the book - Pirates love underpants, a Golden pants trophy that I made, a monkey in underpants that just needs a banana making, a pop up pirate game (bought) and a few other bits.  I'm not saying all as I want some of them to be a surprise for my children.

April 25th 2015 - Making a felt book

April 25th 2015 - Making a felt book

For the front of my story sack I want a small fabric book, I thought felt would be the best bet.  So I started to look for a simple design that I could use.  I couldn't find one.  Then I came across this Needle holder book and it was just what I was looking for.

So I set about making it, mine will have 10 pages in total which I plan to add "reading/book" quotes to each page.  My initial idea was to stitch them on the felt, then I realised that the sewing would go through and I couldn't use the reverse side of the page.  I tried fabric pens and fabric paint but they looked really big on the felt and not very nice.  My last idea and what I am going with was stitching the quotes onto another piece of material and fixing that to the book pages.  Whether I fix with glue or sewing i'm not quite sure.

I am going to write the quotes in pencil on the extra piece of material and then stitch over them, so that they stand out.

The middle of the book where I have sewed them together

1 of the purple and green pages inside

The book folded

April 22nd 2015 - Family Learning Story sacks

April 22nd 2015 - Family Learning Story sacks

Family Learning at the school has started a new course today - Story sacks.  This envolves us parents making a story sack based on a book.

We sat and discussed ideas that we could put in 1 based on a story about night pirates and included things like a pirate hat and eye patch, treasure chest and treasure, story book, fact book, map, material for the sea, moon and stars, a boat or ship, pirate puppets/finger puppets, pirate toys etc.

By next wednesday we need to have a story book and some ideas of what we are going to include in it.  Having 2 children at the school that did the last course with me I have got to decide if i'm making 1 between them (but as different ages this could be hard), or if i'm going to make 2 which means that they may not be as good as just 1.

I think this course could turn out to be really good.

February 28th 2015 - Painting the spell book

February 28th 2015 - Painting the spell book

Today I am going to give the spell book its 1st coat of paint.  As I don't have enough purple acrylic I am going to do the first coat in a pale pink (mixed with silver) to make sure I have enough, this paint also has a sparkle to it.

I found a pin on pinterest about using acrylic paint to paint book covers with.  I planned to use this paint anyway as its stronger than kids poster paints.  I am also thinking about varnish or pva glue to protect it.

Here is the book after its pink coat of paint:

I think its starting to come along quite nicely.

February 24th 2015 - Spell Book the next part

February 24th 2015 - Spell Book the next part

Back at the end of January (almost a month ago now) I posted about making a spell book.  Since posting that I have managed to glue all the pages together so that they are thicker and there's now only just over 100 instead of the original 200+.

Today I have started to make the fauz leather cover, the idea was combined from this thread on pinterest and an article I found on the Halloween Forum Thread about handmade spell books.

1 and 2





3 and 4

5 and 6

1. Kitchen towel which is 2ply was seperated and gave the bumpy effect.
2. I covered the inside of the cover with pva glue and then placed the kitchen towel on to it.
3. I then covered the outside cover the same way
4. was a plastic lid I placed inside so it didnt stick together when I turned it over to do the back.
5. The front and back covers of the book all covered.
6. A couple of hours after I did it, its starting to dry with lots of texture.

I now need to decide if I am going to add a 2nd layer of the kitchen towel to it, so that the red of the book is definately gone b4 painting, and possibly loose the texture or leave it with just one and the texture I have.  I'm leaning towards leaving it as I like the way it looks.

February 4th 2015 - the Pentagram/pentacle

February 4th 2015 - the Pentagram/pentacle

Today the Pentagram/pentacle has arrived for the cover of my Halloween Spell Book.  It is much bigger than I thought it would be, but it does fit (just) on the front of the book.

This is it as it has arrived.  I have since Given it a coat of silver paint, and it is going to need a 2nd and maybe a 3rd as its quite patchy at the moment.  I plan to make it really pretty with purple gem stones - my plan is to end up something like this one, obviously without all the swirls and stuff but the with purple stones.

 

 This was my inspiration for todays pin, but I also thought I would use this one which has information about the Pentagram.

The Pentagram is NOT a bad symbol nor is it linked to devil worship like many people believe.  The Pentagram is a 5pointed star that is used for protection, all of its lines are interlinked and are enclosed in a circle.  The 5 points all have a meaning, the top is for the Spirit or Goddess, the rest represent the elements, the top left is for Air, the top right is for Water, the bottom left is for Earth  and the bottom right is for Fire.  You can find out more about it's meanings here.

January 29th 2015 - Making a Spell book

January 29th 2015 -Making a Spell book

I am starting the process of making a Spell book ready for Halloween, to go alongside my witches potion shelf and crystal ball that I have.  There are many ideas and tutorials on the internet but most are for an open book and only have 2 pages with spells on, this is 1 of the ideas on pinterest.

However, for my book I plan to add a Spell to every page!  Yes i'm being adventurous and yes I will get it to work and no it's not too early to be thinking about Halloween!  I also found this picture on Pinterest about Halloween that I thought was appropriate:

This is so me and sums things up.  I love Halloween and everything that goes with it, I have boxes of decorations and stuff in the loft, I really think that I should have lived in USA as they do everything on a big scale like I like to do.

Anyway back to the book.  I went to the old/second hand book shop in town on Tuesday 27th January in the hope of finding an old leather bound book of A4 type size that I could convert.  There were some lovely old books that would have been perfect, the only downside was the price of the £6.50 for an A5 and upto £50 an almost A3 size.  They would have been great but I can't justify the cost of it for use of a few hours 1 night a year.  So I went round the charity shops and picked up a 1978 encyclopeadia for 99p, its not as thick as I had hoped for but  i can make it work.

 

I plan to add texture by tissue paper to the cover and then paint it a deep purple, I also want the word spells in raised letters across the top and a silver pentagram underneath and the same on the spine.  I just have to find these bits or work out how to make them!  I am glueing every 2 pages together to make the paper thicker and I will painting them with acrylic paint in a brown to make them look old.  Once these are all done (going to take few weeks as can only glue 4 pages at a time so they dont all stick together and will be the same with paint).  I will then be printing out all the spells I have found  and saved on pinterest in a baord called spells and spell book, and sticking them to the pages.

This is going to be a work in progress and I will be re-visiting as I go during the year.

January 26th 2015 - Book 2 finished

January 25th 2015 - Book 2 finished

Today I haven't done much, I didn't get up until 09:45am and I was in bed at 8:30pm last night after the very early wake up in order to go on the course.  Which we made it to without falling asleep on the train and was very informative.

So today I have sat and typed up the notes I made on the course which actually took ages and then I tried to print for my printer to do 2 pages of 6 (plus I need 3 copies in total) and then said it was out of ink and chucked out blank pages.  I think tomorrow I am going to try and re-set the ink and see if I can get them printed out.   Then I sat and read the last part of my book.  This is 1 of the categories in the 2015 reading challenge.  It is called I heart New York.  And fits under the section of set in another country.

Was your typical romance book really, which I don't mind reading now and then, I used to read them all the time.

January 14th 2015 - Finished 1 book from reading list

January 14th 2015 - Finished 1 book from reading list

Today I have finished 1 book from the 2015 reading challenge.  The book was the subcategory of "Magic", it is called Dark Winter, the wicca circle by John Hennessey, and the pin is located here on my 365 board. 

Strange but good is how I would describe it, there were a few spelling mistakes but this dodn't alter the story, there was alos abit of confusing as it did flit about and repeat a few bits like character descriptions and because of this I gave a 3* rating of it in my review over on goodreads.


Also today my new laptop tray arrived (YAY!) but sadly it doesn't fit across my sofa and 1 leg falls down the gap between cushions and 1 leg doesnt even balance on sofa!  so not good.  But it's not wasted as it fits on hubby's sofa - he only has a 2 seater so the cushions are bit wider.  This does mean that I am still on the look out for a new laptop tray!

book review

I Was given an e-copy of this book (Endangered Creatures) by the author Stephen Dunkley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the use of so many creatures that are believed to be mythical beings like the dragons, dodo's, the yeti and dryads to name a few.  They are described in ways which make you question their being and go against what you have previously read or been told, which in turn makes your mind start questioning things.

The end of each chapter has a clue about the next and therefore they link into each other quite well. 

I found the way the locality of the area where the creatures lived (Regents Park, London) to have been written in an interesting way as I have never thought of it as an "old place".  And also, the other local locations were places I knew of and got thinking as to what the events mentioned actually were.

There were some lines that have really stuck in my mind and made me smile, for instance the linking of Knights in armour to ready to bake meals for Dragons, Dodos to battery farm Turkeys in Norfolk, and he Dryads being linked to being like rugby players and lumberjacks as they are a female nymph! 

The line (quote) "....often mistaken for Lumberjacks.  Although they  never, ever cut down trees.  After all, it would be easy to make a mistake and end up cutting the feet off a hibernating relative." (end quote) really  made me chuckle and think of the fun I could have if I was Dryad and if my own relatives were hibernating at times!

The other line that I really liked was (quote) "I'm sorry, but dragons don't come in pink." (end quote),  this is just utter brilliance and a great conversation stopper, and a line I would love to find a use for!

Knowing that the author was previously a barman, it made me wonder how many of the creatures were based on punters from the bars and/or his own drinking buddies!!!  The whole book had a feel of being along the same lines as a Terry Pratchett book. 

I finished reading it in 1 day as I didn't want to put it down, which is usually a sign of a good book, as it means it has caught my full attention.  It was an easy read, was entertaining with humour throughout that flowed well with the storyline.  I'm looking forward to reading another instalment if there is one.